Akai iMPC Pro Now Available

Akai Professional has announced the availability of the iMPC Pro app for iPad.

iMPC Pro re-imagines the classic music production center as an iPad app – offering 64 tracks for composing, editing and mixing music. It offers most of the features of classic MPCs and adds new features that the iPad makes possible, including: touch-based sample editing, a new timeline view, Inter-App Audio and social sharing.

It’s available now – with a US $20 regular price and discounted $12.99 price for early adopters.

iMPC Pro is the type of app that gets musicians excited about the iPad. For the price of a pizza, iMPC Pro puts a music production center on your iPad that’s surprisingly powerful. While it won’t replace the traditional MPC for hardware fans, iMPC Pro makes MPC-style music making affordable to anyone with an iPad.

Here are the details:

Akai iMPC Pro Intro Video:

Features:

Sample audio from the iPad microphone, line-in, or your music library using the multi-touch turntable interface

64 tracks for flexible multi-tracking recording and production

Sample Editor with undo history for slicing, chopping, trimming, and categorizing your loops and samples

New Timeline View opens a multi-touch gestural editor for sequencing, recording, and editing

New Flux mode lets you warp and glitch your beats in real-time or with automation

$12.99 is a steal. I thought this would be priced more like Korg’s apps.

I want to see MIDI In/Out support added, though. Not a show-stopper, but ‘pro’ apps support ‘pro’ standards. I wonder if there’s any technical reason for them not supporting it. Anybody got ideas on this?

I think this is really well thought for the touch interface of the iPad. So while I understand the need for MIDI In/Learn, just using app’s UI may be faster and easier. I’d only use a MIDI keyboard for Inter-App synth with this.

MIDI is essential, not just to work with other apps but also to sequence external hardware.
It was a big flaw in iMPC and it’s still a huge flaw in this one. The lack of MIDI makes it useless for my specific needs.

I’m not sure about that really; it’s a sampler, surely you are going to want to sample things with it?

While I understand some forms of music may even benefit from lack of midi sync, for most forms of music you will want to record your samples ‘in time’… no?

Yes I know you can trigger things in time and achieve a similar effect, I am well practiced in this and have done it that much I have it down to milliseconds, but I much prefer it when I don’t have to worry about things like that. I spent a significant chunk of the 90’s manually syncing pc’s (well trying too, my mate was always batter at it than me), and the 00’s too actually… but those days are past, it’s 2014… we all have a lot of other gear in one form or another and midi sync is important to most of us 🙂

Maybe I am spoiled, Loopy is perfect for recording samples in this way, but less great for playing them back. Anyway, point is it is perfectly possible and I would consider it basic functionality of an app that proclaims itself as a pro level app.

Oh, and the process of recording a chunk of audio and then trimming it is not a solution either – you can’t do that on the fly live, at least not without two switchable audio outs so you can cue one while you trim it and have the other playing through the pa. But who the heck wants to do that? Not me that’s for sure, ‘real time’, ‘live’ sampling ‘in time’ is what pro means to me in this context 🙂

It has MIDI input for the notes, got that working. Apart from that the workflow feels very nice to me and I like how it’s a mixture of live-performance, immediacy and timeline control. I think this is a great application! For those talking about TableTop, Retronyms stated that the required TableTop update is still in review by Apple, they’ll release it as soon as it’s approved.

It just takes any MIDI input. Play the notes on MIDI channel 10, it’s using the typical weird non-continguous MPC pad assignment for notes. Just play around until you figure it out, I can’t easily find which ones they are exactly in a quick google search.

Thanks Geert! I have a controller mapped out to play on original impc so I figured the mappings would carry over,especially seeing as it is an akai MPk mini. Is there even a menu to select controllers for. Or is it just plug and go?

Just plug a class compliant MIDI device in, and it seems to work. Btw, here are the notes in question, but use MIDI channel 10 instead of 12 that’s mentioned there http://www.akaipro.com/kb/article/1459

Are you positive that IAA in iMPC pro can be used as an OUTPUT? (i.e. record the OUTPUT of iMPC into another IAA compatible recording app?) I haven’t seen it specifically mentioned in any reviews or specs except here. Most just claim iMPC Pro can sample from IAA compatible generators, but this functionality was already available in iMPC… If you can confirm that IAA can allow for recording the iMPC Pro output, I will race you to the app store.

It’s working fine with my Korg PadKontrol right now. The pads are random as far as what midi notes they receive, but I guess that’s how a hardware MPC is? I can save you some time and tell you what gets what if you’re trying to configure a controller. [email protected]
If anyone can figure out CC information for effects, and bank changes let me know, I’ll keep working at it.

1. Is there a manual? I get there are help screens but they seem a bit basic.
2. Press a button, it holds for the length of the sample. Does this exist? The latch function is only per notes. If I record a 4 bar loop I’d like to press it and it plays till I stop it.
3. Duplicate a track. Doable?
Got great help from this community with a MIDI question I had so Im posting here for this too. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the response.
Been through them. So is it safe to say, if not in the videos, there is no latch function other than a few notes? I cant find that in any of them. I really hope having to scrub through a playlist on Youtube isnt the answer to a manual.

Closest workaround to duplicate a track is selecting everything from the timeline, and pasting it into a new track with the same kit then readjusting the parameters…which seems kind of convoluted.

i always thought retronyms was just a money-hungry b**** but this app is great! i really like using it, gives me great results in no time. sampling via IAA is fast and convenient.

there are some downsides:
– it works on ipad2 but you can feel that there’s not much cpu-headroom. makes me want a new ipad 🙂
– the live beat flux thing seems to be kinda buggy, sometimes it stops working.
– no 50% quantize (why is that missing in most apps anyway?)
– couldn’t find a way to quantize with swing AFTER recording. am i missing sth?
– how can i duplicate sequences/tracks? workaround by copying events in the timeline editor? really?
– the visual feedback on the “tune” parameter in the timeline editor is kinda useless, editing melodies is very unconvenient this way
– you can only use the duck OR the master comp/limiter

but: this is one of the best ipad apps i’ve seen so far, it’s just very useable and i feel it’s gonna be part of my workflow from now on. the effects and filters are quite good (esp. compared to beatmaker). 20 bucks is more than fair.

all in all: THANKS FOR A GREAT APP – and now give us an iphone version please!

This is a great app which im sure the developer will continue to-evolve and listen to some strong and relevent requests by its user’s, though im also-intrigued to see how its competitors respond like Beatmaker 3 ,which i believe is somewhere in the wings ? Midi clock and timestretch ,beat detecor warp markers ect ?? Kind of essential now ,once the ipad truly does enter the pro arena,developers would be savvy to-pre plan this in terms of app spec,becuase it is an inevitability

Well it simply HAS to be an improvement over the impc app on my iPhone- worst of all the DAW-ish apps! I try and use it still every once in a while, just to try and get my money’s worth. That’s $2.99 I’ll never ever see again, bastards. Keeps me up at night

Irony, mate! See I’m mocking the idea of getting worked up over 3 bucks the way many people do. Pretty clever, eh. That last statement was meant to be ironic as well, Mr. Gmacdaddy (a name so stupid as to be an obvious piss-take! hahaha nice one!)

I like it, but does anyone know why when I sample through an iRig, I’m not getting line in monitoring? No idea what I’m actually sampling. Can anyone confirm they get monitoring through other audio interfaces? I know iRig is crap, so may get something better.

it’s funny how people in these post expect to buy a $12.99 app and have it have all the functionality of a piece of hardware gear or even a full program on a mac or PC. these types of apps a basically for you to carve ideas on the fly, on the go and when you’re NOT in a full studio. All these features mention would be great but the iPad has limitations. I mean for the price it’s pretty powerful. if it was like $199 I’d get the complaints but really? $12.99? you’re not getting full studio features for that price. that is all….

Posted this in the MIDI thread also.
I tried to use this with an iTack Dock and the sound comes out of the iPad speakers and not the headphones plugged into the dock. All other music apps I have work fine with the dock.
Does this mean the iMPC Pro does not work with any sound ‘card’ interface plugged into the lightning connector.
You also have to completely kill the iMPC app to get the sound back through the dock.
I hope this is some kind of bug that can be fixed because this renders this app useless for me.
Don’t tell me I have to use that bloated Tabletop app to make this wok properly.

This app really shouldn’t be considered pro unless
– you can easily duplicate sequences
– midi export is easier
– join the audiobus community
– better swing/quantize control
I would pay extra for these features. I bet the guys at beatmaker will read this and eat your lunch if you don’t step up your game.
However.. Big ups to the UI designer. Great look and feel.

UPDATE..
I figured out the easiest way to duplicate a sequence in impc pro is to go into the song tab.
Push and HOLD down the sequence button. Then drag and drop it over to an empty sequence button. Now it makes sense..